Dumb Q: Is Porsche fully independent?

An acquaintance who likes to talk a lot recently said that Porsche is basically owned by VW but that VW mgmt let's Porsche stay, and I quote, "independent". I thought that Porsche was owned by Porsche and answered to no one else. Was I wrong??

Porsshe IS "independent" but the relationship between Porsche and VW/Audi has been ongoing for years. Dr. Peich, the recently retired chairman of VW is a Porsche family member. I'm just not well-versed enough to provide any detail.

They are independent. That would be something to consider when people talk about them needing to take on Audi and now Bentley (both owned by VW) in top level racing. IMHO, Porsche does not have the capital to put toward the developement of a top class car. <img border="0" alt="[icon107]" title="" src="graemlins/icon107.gif" />

Some people know things nobody else knows. I thought Chrysler owned them both and made them produce SUVs.

Don is correct. It is sort of a kiretsu type relationship with some crossholdings and joint board members. There has been lots of joint projects and some part sharing between the two companies over the years. There are also some who believe that the reason that Porsche is currently out of prototype sports car racing is the word came from Audi to move aside to let them win a few championships. Now it appears that Bentley will be the favored son for a few years, so Porsche will no doubt continue to confine itself to the GT and, maybe, GTS classes. Karl

This is the first time I've ever been quicker than Karl. I want a trophy. Although our post times are identical to the minute, I finished .027 seconds quicker. Actually, he started before me, but was too wordy. Oh yeah, I forgot. Porsche has to make a mini van next.

So, there is a "dotted line" (rather than a solid line) from the board room of Porsche to that of VW? Doesn't sound like Porsche is *fully* independent to me.

They are "independent" and some of their stock is publiclly traded in Germany. A majority of their stock is held by the family. btw, you might be interested to know that VW paid Dr. Porsche 5 marks for each bug built as payment for the design services. The last count I saw was that they had built 13 million bugs and counting... Those payments really helped Porsche during the slow times Roy

Actually, I just looked this up in the Porsche annual report. All of the common shares are held by the Porsche and Piech families. The common represent 50% of the outstanding shares. The remainder of the shares are preferred and are publically traded. About half of the preferred are held by institutions (don't know if VW Group might be one of these) and the rest by individuals, including some of the family members. Ferdinand Piech is the former Chairman of VW and is on the Porsche Supervisory Board, so that is the "dotted" line between the two companies. There is also a lot of shared engineering and sometimes parts between the two companies, including the 914, 924, and, most recently the Cayene/Tourareg. The relationship between VW Group and Porsche is not like Toyota/Lexus but it sure is a lot cosier than, say, Ford and GM. Karl

So no ADRs available???

Everyone has handled this pretty well but I'll add my 2 pfenig (German for cents), Porsche Financial Services IS a division of VW/Audi Financial services. <img border="0" alt="[cheers]" title="" src="graemlins/beerchug.gif" />

Well your pfennigs are no longer any good. Germany switch to the Euro 1 Jan 2000. It is now 2 cents, which would have been about 4 pfennings.

Maybe I should add that the 996 body is manufactured by BMW, the Tiptronic transmission is really a ZF one (same supplier as for Mercedes and others), Porsche is engineering for other car brands and so on... The automotive sector is more like a network of companies today. Right now I am working for one DaimlerChrysler brand and I see how suppliers (= independent companies) are forced onto the DaimlerChrysler factory area and into the manufacturing processes. Quite interesting. Furthermore, I guess you all know where the 911 derived from? After the 356 maily relied on VW parts, spiced and tuned up with Porsche engineering (and put beneath a beautiful, hand-shaped body), Porsche started developing the 901. 901 because the 9xx number scheme was the only one left in the VW parts management system, and Porsche was using this system at this time. Guess why all the ***** and buttons in the early 911s from the sixties look like those from a beetle? Porsche started the marketing of the brand new 2+2 sports coupe called 901 and Peugeot sued Porsche because they had the trademarks for all car names consisting of three numbers with a 0 in the middle (remember today: Peugeot 205,206,305,306,307 etc.). So Porsche switched to 911, the rest is history.

Also interesting to note that the grandfather of the chief designer of the 911 is none other than Dr. Porsche (the designer of the VW Beetle).

VW is state owned. Porsche is totally independent. There are relationships, but no ownership. Piech used to work for Porsche before going to VW. He was in charge of racing for a while. Porsche has said on occasion they have the sponsorship necessary to pay for a overall win program, but they needed the engineering recources for other projects (please don't go there). Piech's bio will make a great read some day. He has something like 13 kids by a succession of wives. I'm one of those who believes Piech worked the boardroom to allow Audi to win. I wouldn't be surprised if the R-8 was at least partially developed in Weissach.

I think Dr. Piech left Porsche when the big shakeup came resulting in no Porsche family member could run the day to day business because factions of the family were fighting and attempting to gain control. BTW, remember those old dealer signs and advertising that said: PORSCHE+Audi Not related to this thread, but an interesting piece of history related to the Porsche family was the fact that Porsche AG was sued by a Czech automobile company called Tatra because Dr. Porsche "stole" some blueprints or something from Hans Ledwinka because Hans and Tatra developed the first air-cooled, rear engine automobile in 1933. In fact Tatra and Porsche were competing for Hitler's "peoples car" design. When Germany invaded Czechoslavakia (sp?) Hitler and Porsche collaborated and Tatra was forced out of the competition. Thus was born the Beetle. It was much later proven that Porsche copied some of the design of the competing Tatra. Hans Ledwinka was the Ferdinand Porsche of the Tatra organization. They knew each other, and they were developing their engineering skills in their companys. Tatra got slammed by Germany and then Britain before, during, and after the war and thus got a late start on their auto development. It is a fascinating story and not usually told in Porsche history...the fact that Porsche was sued for copyright infringement on their basic design and eventually had to pay handsomely for the "opportunistic" Dr. Porsche.